ISSUE #11 – ECONOMY

Framed as inescapable, indescribable, uncontrollable and essential, economies are everywhere. Oppressive and enabling, lucrative and undervalued, there are economies that trade our emotional labour, desires, love, fertility, time, minds, queerness, politics and clicks. There are economies that we can control and that control us, and those that we can subvert to serve our collectives. A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound, in a conversation with a cat, an app-enabled journey through a rainy Shanghai night, in the margins between intimacy and power, in the kitchen, with your record collection, under the tip of the iceberg, at the foot of a tower she built, dancing at the lesbian bar.

Mothers & Daughters A LESBIAN BAR

Beursschouwburg, Brussels

8, 15, 22 DECEMBER 2017

Well I was dancing at a nightclub one Friday night
And that nightclub bar was a little uptight
Yeah, I was dancing all alone a little self-conscious
When some kids came up and said
“for dancing come with us.”
And soon…

I was dancing in a lesbian bar, ah-oo, ah-oo
I was dancing in a lesbian bar, ooh, ooh, ooh
– Jonathan Richman, “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar”

ISSUE #10 – FUTURE

We want a future outside of straight time. A future in which all our friends and lovers and their lovers are coming over for dinner around a table we built together. We want a future that is fair, fun, furry, fabulous, fierce, free and not fucked up. We want futures.

Launch Issue #10

BRUSSELS

September 2 2017

Buenos Tiempos, Int. waves and welcomes the London-built CAMPerVAN caravan to host the launch of a new issue of Girls Like Us magazine. We invite you to join us for this evening of events and good times.

Their Trans Tube

Grace Dunham, New York

YouTube is not just a repository for animal videos (although, in all honesty, I find those emotionally uplifting and worthwhile). It's also one of the primary, already existing visual archives of queer and trans culture. Because of violence and marginalization, so many of our ancestors didn't have access to the institutions that make creative work permanent or longstanding, be that publication or preservation. But, throughout the last half-century, people have documented their friends, lovers and communities performing, talking, simply existing.

Her Sturm Und Drang

Amy Sillman, New York

Sturm-Frauen, an exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt this winter, was a mind-blowing show of female artists working in Berlin between 1910 and 1932. I frantically
snapped pix on my phone the whole way through the show. The must-have catalogue was sold out at the museum, but may still be available from the publisher. Above all, I was stunned by the work of artist Lavinia Schulz. Schulz was a wildly talented performance artist, the Mike Kelley of her time. She was so far ahead of the curve that she could barely live in her time, plagued perpetually by poverty and misunderstanding, but an artist of total brilliance and scope.

ISSUE #8 – FAMILY

As you know, we have a soft spot for collectives, collaborations, friendships and support structures. People doing things with other people: loving, working, organizing, living. These strategies for surviving together form an underlying thread throughout all our issues. This time we wanted to look more closely at one way of naming these friendly constellations: FAMILY.

Her Books

Jessie McLaughlin, London

It was the end of 2010, I’d just graduated with a BA in literature and I was feeling stuck. I didn’t read anymore; instead I trawled job sites, fudging CVs and covering letters together with experience only of working in a family bakery and a pub. I was depressed, I was lonely, I had no money and no confidence. So I dreamt up a reading group. I wrote down a vague premise, made up a name and emailed around a few bookshops and project spaces. Eleanor, of X Marks the Bökship, replied. And so we started ‘I’ve Never Read Her’, a literature project reading short fiction and essays by women, open to all. Here is the list of all the writings we have read to date:

ISSUE #7 – BODY

120 pages exploring the body and bodies, inside out and outside in. Bodies that dance and move. Bodies making waves. Body double. Bodies at work and working with the body. Using the body as an instrument. The body as medium and massage of touch and being touched. The single, singular body as the very basis for a ‘we’.

T-Shirt More Or Less Female

25 EUR

French Kisses

District, Berlin

September 18, 2015

We celebrate the Berlin premiere of the new issue of GIRLS LIKE US, themed BODY. For the launch event, contributor to the issue, the New York based artist and fame of Berlin's greatest Kotti-Shop Annette Knol will show materials of her ongoing research of "Lesbian Hands". The launch is part of the 4-day gathering called FRENCH KISSES: On Tips of Tongues, and Feeling as Taste, hosted by the Side Room (Amal Alhaag, & Girls Like Us co-editor Maria Guggenbichler) and District Berlin in various locations across the city of Berlin. For the launch at FRENCH KISSES we extend our invitation to the "B2B DJ set" for everyone to play kissing songs, songs to kiss to, songs that make people kiss, songs that are kisses, and kisses that are songs.

Her garden

Sara van der Heide, Amsterdam

300 square meters of Mother Earth near Amsterdam; doing nothing; watching time go by; watching the seasons change; watching the vegetables grow and be eaten by the birds; watching the night fall, watching the sun rise; watching the insects chasing each other; watching some undefined green-grey-yellowish spots floating by in the ditch; hearing the neighbour yell; watching the leaves change from green to yellow;

ISSUE #6 – SECRETS

A secret can be a private space for self-creation – or a shared site of pleasure.

We explore secrets in a plethora of forms and contexts. From layered accounts of mediaeval ecstasy to the unexplored sensory experience of smell. From camouflaged play to queer readings of astrological charts and the hidden history of house music. From a very analog point of view to the outskirts of the internet.

Her Circle

Sanna Samuelsson, Stockholm

"You are not alone". The title of a Michael Jackson song. The main reason for clubbing. And why party organizing can be a field for political progress and activism. Every new party is a new possibility. And feeling is the foundation of the party. Of the body. Of moving hips, and soft lips. I believe that when bodies move, minds do too.

SUMMER SALON

ARCHIVE KABINETT, BERLIN

July 3, 2014

A hot salon hosted by Girls Like Us.

Summer! Half of the word summer consists of the word mer, which in Swedish means more, and in French means sea, both good, and occasions salty. And what is then the sum of summer? A drink perhaps? w. ice. Mosquito bites. Tan lines. Autobahns. Sunstrokes. Sweaty towels. Sanded thoughts. Friday! Half of the word Friday consists of day, and half of the day is the evening, and I promise you this will be a good one.

Her hole

Mel Shimkovitz & Eden Batki, Los Angeles

A bagel is a Jewish baked good. It’s like a mature doughnut. It’s like a doughnut with war stories. It’s like a doughnut with a salty sense of humour. It’s like a doughnut, but Jewish. It’s a long, thick roll with a hole. Making bagels is our Sunday morning ritual. You need to allow an hour for rising time. We have another ritual we fill that hour with. A very abbreviated recipe:

ISSUE #5 – PLAY

In a world with too many choices and too little time to explore, play is an excellent strategy. Objects, roles, bodies, settings – anything can be transformed in play. Playing across time, space, architecture, beds, houses, lives, papers. Suddenly a chair is a plane is a stroy is an animal is an avatar is a new reality. Making up worlds, filming them. Surfing warm and cold waves. Playing with identities. Playing en masse. Playing to be free.